Aerial Bombing Question (1 Viewer)

[stona]

I did BDA on a couple of occasions and, even with modern technology, it can be challenging. Having looked at some of the WW2 imagery, I'm astounded at the results the Photo Interpreters achieved.

Area bombing did simplify the problem somewhat. The British simply estimated the acreage of a target city devastated and didn't worry to much about specific targets within the devastated area. Even this could be difficult. The British post raids report on Hamburg noted that smoke obscured much of the evidence of destruction, but that the "amount of residential damage is very great."
The Germans agreed. The cumulative damage caused by Operation Gomorrah was estimated by the local authorities to be the destruction or damaging of 61% of Hamburg's houses and apartments. Similarly, 580 business premises and 2,632 shops were damaged or destroyed. 900,000 people evacuated the city and had to be looked after. The initial figure for those killed was 31,647, later revised to 38,975. The British didn't realise just how successful (in their terms) the raids had been.
Cheers
Steve

 

[wuzak]

The Oil Plan could only affect part of the logistics picture as the primary fuel for transportation inside Germany or most of the occupied territory was coal. Coal fired locomotives, coal fired tugs/shipping in the rivers/canals/ coastal areas.
Oil/gas shortages would affect the combat arms much more as they were much more dependent on liquid fuel. Horses weren't quite the answer to that (despite using horses/cattle to move aircraft at times) as horse drawn wagons have a much lower payload than most trucks. They also consume more pounds/KG of feed per ton mile/km of cargo moved. Horses being used for draft purposes don't last long on grass. They may be able to live on grass but their ability to pull wagons of several tons for a number of hours a day on a grass diet is very limited.

As far as damage assessment goes. I was a firefighter for 33 years, trying to assess building damage (structural integrity ) is hard enough when you have access to the inside of a building. Trying to do it from pictures taken from several miles away (10,000ft or more) even with telephoto lenses would be darn near impossible.

Coal was also the basis for synthetic oil production, so disrupting its transport also had an affect on the oil production situation, particularly as the Germans relied more on synthetic oil the further the war went.

Synthetic oil production also had side products - such as fertilisers and explosives. These were also, obviously, disrupted by the Transportation Plan.

But those were byproducts of the Transportation Plan? Which was designed to restrict movement of troops, equipment and supplies for the Germans in defence against the invasion?

 

[Zipper730]

Shortly after the outbreak of the war, ignoring the ten squadrons of Battles and two of Blenheims detached from the command and operating in France as the Advanced Air Striking Force

And that was it's own command?

Bomber Command's front line strength was 23 squadrons comprising about 280 aircraft.

2 GROUP. Nos. 21, 82, 107, 110, 114, 139 Squadrons (101 Squadron non-operational) equipped with Blenheims.

3 GROUP. Nos. 9,37,38,99,115,149 Squadrons (214 and 215 Squadrons non operational) equipped with Wellingtons.

4 GROUP. Nos. 10, 51, 58, 77, 102 Squadrons (78 Squadron non operational) equipped with Whitleys.

5 GROUP. Nos. 44,49,50,61,83, 144 Squadrons (106 and 184 Squadrons non operational) equipped with Hampdens.

29 total squadrons 23 operational squadrons, 6 non-operational.

This represents a pale imitation of the strategic bombing force into which the command would evolve within four years.

If I recall by 1945 they could hurl as many as 1200 or 1300 aircraft in one raid, of which a few hundred went to a primary target, and the rest formed diversionary strikes to secondary targets, correct?

The maximum bomb loads of these four aircraft types varied from 1,000 lbs (Blenheim) to 8,000 lbs (Whitley, but not at any range).

And the Lancasters could carry 12,000 to 14,000 pounds, and Mosquitoes around 2,000-3,000 to most all of Germany...

Only the Whitley squadrons of 4 Group had any training in night bombing.

That's all? I thought at least all of Five Group were trained in that...

The severe restrictions placed on bombing at the outbreak of the war were only starting to be loosened in 1940. How severe were those restrictions? No targets of any kind were to be raided on German soil.

Why? They were at war...

The neutrality of Belgium and Holland was to be respected, meaning direct flights to Germany were impossible.

Which was later fixed because of the fact that Belgium and Holland were occupied by Nazi Germany.

A couple of answers about your oil-based questions. Battle Damage Assessment (BDA - today it's called Combat Assessment) of any target can be hard to do with certainty. Take a typical oil facility. If the facility has been entirely eradicated, then it's a pretty simple question to answer...but only for that facility (more on that later). However, it's really, REALLY hard to quantify damage if the place isn't obliterated. For example, major components may appear undamaged to aerial reconnaissance but, in reality, they're riddled with shrapnel and useless. Conversely, If the target is hit with a few bombs, was critical damage achieved or did we just destroy non-essential components? If the storage tanks are hit, how do we know how full they were or how much oil was in the pipes etc?

I would just figure you'd just fly a bunch of missions in rapid succession. You'd want to not only damage the hell out of the facility, but light off as much oil as you could (at least some proportion of incendiaries), and also kill salvage and repair teams (time-delay bombs).

Oil is not a "target". It's a "target system" with many components - extraction, refining, storage, transportation/distribution etc.

Wouldn't you focus mostly on the refinery and the storage? Crude oil is mostly a black/brown/green sludge, though when refined it becomes the proper grades of POL & Natural Gas; the refinery only can refine so much oil at a time, the storage facility can hold it theoretically indefinitely until it's needed (or it gets blown up).

It's also highly distributed, with hundreds of individual facilities, each of which is relatively small given the precision and accuracy that could be achieved by night bombing in the period 1939-1943.

Okay, I understand that.

Add to that complexity that oil doesn't operate on a "use when produced" model like electrical power generation and so it's hard to quantify the impact of hitting an individual target facility.

True, but it would be logical to conclude that they would invariably use oil for various things. Air defense for example, bomber missions, mobile equipment.

There isn't a semi-developed country today, and there wasn't one in the late 30's, that didn't have a strategic stockpile of oil and associated byproducts.

The stocks go under storage right? I remember there was a suspicion that the Germans had underground stocks...

If the Allies made it clear we were just going after oil in 1940

What targets were typically hit in 1940? Oil, railway yards, docks and shipping yards?

the Germans would simply put more defences near the oil facilities which would increase the threat to our bombers and reduce the likely impact of any attacks.

But weren't there heavy defenses over the cities too?

We should also bear in mind that the German Army, despite it's vaunted "Blitzkrieg" tactics was actually far less mechanized than the Allies. Much of the Wehrmacht logistic train was still horse-drawn.

Now, I did not know that!

I think Harris fundamentally understood all these concepts.

Explaining his resistance to attacking target systems other than population centers. Churchill however wanted city-busting raids because he liked the mass-destruction produced: I would not be surprised if he not only wanted the destruction to coerce surrender, but also to intimidate for the future.

General Anderson (USAAF) said when pushing for Operation Clarion that he didn't expect it would shorten the war, but he figured that Germany being hammered from all directions by thousands of airplanes would scare the shit out of people and would be passed down from generations, and make them shit their pants at the thought of ever waging a war again. He didn't use those words exactly, but the point was there.

 

[wuzak]

29 total squadrons 23 operational squadrons, 6 non-operational.

So glad you did the maths.

 

[Zipper730]

I figured you'd appreciate that, Wuzak

 

[wuzak]

If I recall by 1945 they could hurl as many as 1200 or 1300 aircraft in one raid, of which a few hundred went to a primary target, and the rest formed diversionary strikes to secondary targets, correct?

They could send 1,000 bomber raids in 1942. But not necessarily 1,000 effective bombers.

And the Lancasters could carry 12,000 to 14,000 pounds, and Mosquitoes around 2,000-3,000 to most all of Germany...

And the Whitley could carry 2,000-3,000lb of bombs to Italy. Though it took a while to get there.

That's all? I thought at least all of Five Group were trained in that...

Not at that time.

Why? They were at war...

Probably because they didn't want the war to expand too much.

 

[stona]

The 'thousand bomber raids' were little more than stunts organised by Harris as part of his ongoing campaign to secure a future for his Command. They did prove an opportunity to assess the effects of even greater concentrations of bombers in saturating German defences, but this principle had already been established in the earlier raids. 2 hours had been allowed for the 234 bombers to bomb Lubeck, just 90 minutes was the planned period for 1,000 aircraft to attack Cologne.
On the back of his successes against Lubeck and Rostock he raised the idea of a thousand bomber raid with Portal and Churchill, who were both proved impressed with the idea. Harris probably failed to mention that he had barely 400 aircraft with operational crews engaged in regular front-line operations. Within Bomber Command he did have a large number of aircraft at the conversion units attached to Groups operating four engine bombers and in the Command's own OTUs (91 and 92 Groups). This secondary strength would be crewed by instructors (many ex-operational crew) and by crews in the latter stages of their training. Even so, there was still less than 1,000 aircraft available. Harris approached Joubert at Coastal Command who promised 250 aircraft, and Training Command which promised 50, though most proved unsuitable and only 4 flew on the raid.
Unfortunately for Harris the Admiralty subsequently refused to allow Coastal Command aircraft to take part in the raid. This was part of a long running battle over the control of maritime air power between the RAF and the Senior Service for which there is no space here. Suffice to say the the Admiralty could see that helping Bomber Command achieve success in it's ambitious plan was hardly likely to enhance Coastal Command's chances of building up a long range force to counter the U-boat threat.
Bomber Command now effectively lowered the bar for crews to take part in the raid, enabling more aircraft and crews from Training Command to take part. Every aircraft was still supposed to take off with an experienced pilot, but 49 of the 208 aircraft sent by 91 Group were flown by pupil pilots, some from the 'bottom half' i.e. early stages of their training. It was a terrible gamble, but it enabled 1,047 bombers to take off for the raid, all but the 4 Wellingtons provided from Training Command from Bomber Command's own resources.
In addition to these aircraft 49 Blenheims from 2 Group, 29 aircraft from Fighter Command and 15 from Army Cooperation Command would carry out intruder operations over and around German night fighter airfields.
Substantial damage was caused to Cologne, and more than 450 people killed for the loss of 41 aircraft.
Subsequent 1000 bomber raids to Essen and Bremen (which didn't make the 1000 mark) were far less successful (particularly Essen) and raids on this scale using so many secondary units were not repeated.
The major beneficiaries of the raids were Harris and Bomber Command. In today's parlance we would say that they raised the profile of both, Harris was firmly in the public eye where he would remain throughout the war, and after.

Cheers

Steve

 

[pbehn]

Why? They were at war...
.

Yes war had been declared, but in the early days some still hoped that Hitler could be persuaded to pull out of Poland. This is exactly the same as in the first Gulf War when Saddam was given the option to pull out of Kuwait before he was kicked out.

 

[stona]

The real reasons were complicated, dating back to the reluctance of the Chiefs of Staff to inflict civilian casualties on moral grounds, contrary to the wishes of the RAF. In 1928 one of Trenchard's papers was deemed unacceptable and

"a departure from accepted principles of war" because "civilian life will be endangered to an extent which has hitherto not been contemplated under International Law."

In the late 1930s the British perceived themselves to be in a position of weakness as far as attacks on the morale of the civilian populations were concerned. The British love a committee, and the succinctly named 'Joint Planning Sub-Committee of the Situation in the Event of War with Germany in 1939' made this clear in a report of 26th October 1936.
Three types of air attack against Germany were perceived as having any chance of success, and the first of these was attacks to demoralise the German people

"by methods similar to those we foresee the Germans themselves using against us."

But this came with a strong caveat.

"Any attempt to demoralise the German people before German air attacks could demoralise our own people would operate under a severe handicap. London is an objective of far greater national importance than Berlin, and for many reasons presents an easier and more effective target for German attack than Berlin does for the Allied air forces...German preparations for air attack are much in advance of our own.Moreover a military dictatorship is likely to be much less susceptible to popular outcry than a democratic government. It is, consequently, unsafe to assume that under our present programme our air force, even with the cooperation of the French, will be able, by attacking the morale of the German people, to produce an effect in any way comparable with that which would result from German air attack against our own."

The British would bend over backwards to avoid causing civilian casualties in Germany for fear of German retaliation against her own civilian population. It was only after the Germans had targeted civilians, not just in Britain, that British restrictions began to be loosened.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Milosh]

named 'Joint Planning Sub-Committee of the Situation in the Event of War with Germany in 1939' made this clear in a report of 26th October 1939,immediately prior to the start of the war.

Steve, isn't this date after the start of WW2?

 

[stona]

Steve, isn't this date after the start of WW2?

It certainly is. I've amended my post to give the correct date which is OCTOBER 1936.

Apologies for any confusion.

The British reluctance to bomb indiscriminately continued into 1940. On 4th June the DAS (Douglas) wrote to Portal.

"7. It is realised that it is extremely difficult to identify and attack the oil objectives in the absence of adequate moon conditions. During the remaining dark night, therefore, you should continue as at present to bring about continuous disruption and dislocation of German war industry, particularly in those areas within range where the aircraft industry is concentrated...The oil targets should be selected as first objectives, alternative objects being aircraft factories, and after that any self illuminating targets which are otherwise identifiable.*

8. In this connection your attention is drawn to paragraph 3 of the new Bombardment Instructions...In no circumstances should night bombing be allowed to degenerate into mere indiscriminate action, which is contrary to the policy of His Majesty's Government."

My bold.

Two years later Harris would argue, quite correctly from a technical point of view, that his area bombing was anything but indiscriminate. The people on the receiving end might well have thought otherwise.

*In the context of the entire document this seems to be a reference to power stations.

Cheers

Steve

 

[buffnut453]

Zipper730,

You've been asked this before but I really, REALLY wish you'd quite including multiple quotes into a response. It makes it really hard to answer or comment on your many questions...but I'll try.

In terms of where to focus effort, that depends on where you get most bang for your buck - how many of each target type (extraction, refining, storage and distribution) do you have to hit and how easy are the targets to hit. If you only have one extraction site but multiple refining and storage locations, it's clearly easier to go after extraction.

You can fly a bunch of missions in quick succession but, again, that only takes out one facility. The whole production capability is distributed so the other sites are merrily producing while you focus on one site. As soon as you shift to take out the other sites, the first site will be repaired and back up and running. As previously noted, it's a "whack-a-mole" problem. There simply weren't the resources available to hit every oil facility with the kind of persistence needed until very late in the game.

Your comment "True, but it would be logical to conclude that they would invariably use oil for various things. Air defense for example, bomber missions, mobile equipment" confuses me. I was making the observation that, unlike electricity, oil doesn't go straight from the refinery to the user. I think you're missing my key point that there were strategic oil and byproducts reserves and so simply hitting refining capabilities isn't going to have any immediate, sizeable impact on the enemy's war effort. Over time it will but it won't bring the war machine to a grinding halt.

Storage takes many forms - storage at refineries prior to and after the refining process, storage at transportation hubs, mass strategic reserves (again, highly protected and distributed - you didn't want your strategic fuel reserve being taken out in a single bombing raid), and local storage near to the point of use. Just think how many thousands of storage sites there were at the national level...it was a really tough task to target them all as individual facilities. Also, many were collocated with other targets...which gets us back to Harris' concept of simply destroying as much of Germany's war-making capacity as possible.

Cities were heavily defended but it's easier to hit a city than it is an oil facility. To obtain any degree of precision and accuracy typically required low-level attacks which would expose the bombers to far more AAA, particularly the smaller calibre weapons, than was the case during the city raids.

Finally, you ask about bomber targets in 1940. Steve will probably chime in with more accurate info but a fair amount of effort was dedicated to the German Kriegsmarine trying to attack surface combatants and submarines in port. Much of Germany's vital infrastructure remained out of range of the available bomber resources in 1940.

 

[stona]

a fair amount of effort was dedicated to the German Kriegsmarine trying to attack surface combatants and submarines in port.

They also started looking for German naval targets virtually from the get go. The first Bomber Command mission of the war took place on 3rd September and involved a Blenheim reconnaissance aircraft, 18 Hampdens and 9 Wellingtons which all went looking for German warships. The Blenheim photographed some north of Wilhelmshaven, but the bombers did not find them.
That Blenheim, N6215, was the first British aircraft to cross the German coast in WW2.

Raids against the Kriegsmarine started the next day and various shipping searches continued for the rest of 1939 and into the first months of 1940. At this time Bomber Command could only attack ships in the open sea or moored in harbour waters, not alongside a dockside wharf. On 17th March 1940 German aircraft, attacking Scapa Flow, dropped bombs on land killing one civilian and wounding seven more. On 19/20 March Bomber Command was authorised to attack the seaplane base at Hornum. This was a reprisal attack and the first on a German land target. The gloves were not off, but they were being loosened.

April 1940 saw a slight shift of priorities with the Norwegian campaign, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were among vessels unsuccessfully attacked as early as the 4th and 5th April and the Kriegsmarine was a constant target. Sometimes it assumed the highest priority, as in the anti U-boat effort in the second quarter of 1941.

Cheers

Steve